Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to begin attracting new web traffic is publish fresh content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing simply by regularly adding fresh content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are researching any opportunity they can to improve their performance and results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were running smoothly in the widget assembly line when suddenly, everything stopped.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went immediately to the main control box. After staring at the wiring board for 2 minutes or less, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a gentle tap about three cm from the right-hand side of the unit.
Immediately, the machinery sprang to life once more.
The floor manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP blog set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges can seem quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything works as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web server, your WordPress site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of the configuration process)
Let’s take a brief look at what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites and/or online services.
External Services
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, be automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your configuration, content linking back to your website will get automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your website will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use the information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, use the information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profile pages with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, your WordPress administration area includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify your list of update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your content, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely immune from cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WordPress Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their own networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also give you options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) can be configured for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Post Tags And Categories
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically start generating traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this process can take some web developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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